How Twitter’s API Improved WoW Gamer Engagement

World of Warcraft (WoW) is the hugely popular MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) with more than 10 million actively monthly subscribers. Now, that community has been given more sharing support thanks to the implementation of Twitter’s API, according to a recent post by Ryan Choi that references a case study undertaken by Twitter.

With the insightful inclusion of rich chat functionality built into the foundation of the platform from early on, the game’s developer, Blizzard, created a rich online interactive community. Through guild systems that encourage collaboration, the platform even fosters a vibrant digital goods ecosystem.

Blizzard has now gone one further and extended WoW’s reach by integrating with Twitter for users to broadcast gameplay and in-game activity to a wider community. This mechanism was created using a Twitter sharing feature for publishing screenshots or selfies as part of a Tweet. The feature was also supported by an FAQ covering functionality, security and WoW’s no-spam policy.

The new feature uses the following pieces of the Twitter platform:

Twitter OAuth for connecting a Twitter account to the user’s WoW profile

Screenshot and selfie feature for capturing reactions and in-game experiences

Custom Tweet intent to clearly indicate posting content to Twitter

Twitter REST APIs for uploading a photo with a Tweet

By incorporating the Twitter APIs in this way, Blizzard has extended the in-game community to encompass a wider audience. As WoW Community Team Editor Micah Whipple noted, "The Twitter APIs were pretty quick to learn and get implemented. We were able to easily roll out this new feature to our global community across 11 different languages worldwide.”

About the author:Martin W Brennan
Martin W Brennan is a co-founder of ViewPop, the social network that puts the creation of 3D photos and videos in the hands of anyone with a smartphone. For his day job, Martin is a copywriting consultant at We Write Words, learning about the world as he writes about it.